Word Q & A

re: Word Q & A

hambone — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:59:37 GMT

Hi Joannie, I am a new user in the manufacturing environment. I would like to create what we call a "setup sheet" that has editable fields for specific information. I have created a document using the insert table function and have it set up pretty much like i want. Now i would like to make certain fields un-editable and also have the TAB key skip over these fields to the editable field next to it that has specific info. HELP

re: Word Q & A

Stefan Word2k — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:19:52 GMT

What happens if you try manual spell check? Does it work?

re: Word Q & A

Art Samson — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:15:20 GMT

Why won't my word 2007 perform spell check? I have it set up to automatically check. Thanx A

re: Word Q & A

Scott S. — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:34:13 GMT

I am assembling a book of magazine articles into a book and to submit them as a single file to the publisher. Using the 'Insert' command I added each article to the end of the previous article to put them in order in one long file. When I got done I had a manuscript that was backwards. That is the title page and first chapter were ar the end of the file. Everything was in perfect order - backwards. Is there anyway to "flip" the order of these chapters to bring chapter 1 to the begining? If not how can I get this done? Thanks a lot,

Scott

re: Word Q & A

0,000000001 percent — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:21:00 GMT

Hi Stuart, I appreciate your answer but I'd really like to happen something at MS soon so they concentrate on making more stable and (because of that) more user-friendly Office software again. Just remember my citation on Apple above again. Regarding the doc-not-deleted-after-conversion/wrong dialog there would be surely better ways to satisfy customer needs. If some customers really want this behaviour why not make an migration options dialog letting companies decide if they want to delete the docs after conversion, what should be written in the dialog, etc. - separately for local and network stored documents. Actually I don't think the majority of customers is even aware of the current behaviour and its consequences yet. Regarding support agreements - we actually buyed professional support just to report bugs for Office 2007 to MS. Of course it's nice for MS to be paid for bugs but that's not customer friendly at all, is it? And I guess conveying many of my concerns via professional support would be something we would have to pay for - because they are design decisions not bugs and only bug reports are free. It's not customer friendly either that the doc-conversion issue is well-known at MS but there's (except for the comments in this blog) no documentation about it - a public knowledge base article would be the least one would expect about this issue! I'm sure there would be workarounds for most of the issues of OFC.EXE - maybe even with some complex batch scripts as well. But that's not what customers want. It should work reasonably out of the box. However one of the reasons MS decided to not delete converted files is the amount of issues occuring with conversion. I.e. just yesterday I had one more regarding Excel. I've drawn some arcs and lines into a worksheet using Excel 2000. I opened the xls with Excel 2007 just to find out the arcs where no real arcs anymore (I could not make the arc longer using the yellow drag points). This worked just with new arcs created with Excel 2007. However I decided to convert the file just for fun to xlsm. Guess what - it was not readable anymore, Excel 2007 tried to repair its own just converted file but did not succeed. I could report this to MS support if I can reproduce it but I'm not sure I want to. According to my previous experience with MS support reporting things seems lots of lost time with no results. If bugs told to MS support get not fixed why should they act on design request? So people will eventually give up reporting things or think as I did long time - the bug is so OBVIOUS that it'll be fixed! So it's hard for an issue to raise from 0,000000001 percent to just 1 percent in MS' point of view. -- 0,000000001 percent

re: Word Q & A

wrdblog — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:22:10 GMT

0,000000001 percent-- All of the points that you raise are extremely valid and definitely things we need to continue to consider. It's difficult to come up with a solution to come up with a solution that will please all of our customers. In this case, we went with the combination of options that seemed to best meet the customer goals reported to us. We certainly continue to evaluate this but so far the majority of customers seem to support the current implementation for the reasons I provided. As a possible workaround for your last point (wanting to remove DOC files for which DOCX files with the name file name exists), our feedback from customers included reports that most network administration tools provide mechanism for automating such a task. Implementing such a solution would then give you control over the process. But we are listening and do respect the points that you've raised. If you do have a support agreement with Microsoft and have not already, then you should also convey these concerns via that route. --Stuart

re: Word Q & A

0,000000001 percent — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:01:16 GMT

Hi Stuart, thank you for pointing out your reasons to not delete the DOC file after selecting convert. There are two things I disagree with: - I'm doing Office support in my company and I always try to avoid to tell people wrong things. Telling wrong things would some day stop people from trusting me. It's the same thing with the dialog. If it tells wrong things (even with the good intention not to confuse people) people WILL lose trust in Word. And what should I tell people who tell me Word, doesn't do what they're reading in the dialog. Should I tell them it's no bug but a design decision by Microsoft to tell end users definitely wrong things in dialogs because they think this would improve clarity for them??? Would you trust in a system which gives you wrong information? If you once find this out this is an user experience with the system you'll never forget. And you'll never believe in any dialog of the system again. So for users giving wrong information is WORSE than giving no information. - You say deleting the doc file would break links. That's true but there are a lot of cases I can imagine where a link to an outdated document will cause MUCH MORE trouble than a broken link: With your "solution" people FEEL like everything's working but they actually open outdated information through links, and might even take wrong decisions based on it. This might not be discovered soon but WHEN it's discovered it leads to a lot of mistrust in reliability of the system (and trouble for IT departments) So please discuss your solution again!!! Furthermore the automatic deletion of the DOC files after conversion to DOCX seems to me the only practicable way to migrate files to the new file format on a network. I know of OFC.EXE from ORK. But this tool is NOT really suited for mass conversion which is btw only possible after roll-out. Actually IMHO it SHOULD convert (including deletion of .doc) all the files it can to the SAME locations with the same file system rights as before and leave unconvertable files untouched. Currently it only converts to a different folder just leaving out all the files it CANNOT convert. So what's missing is a secure way to replace all convertable files with .DOCX files. Like it's now you will never get rid of the duplicate DOC files on a big network storage causing storage waste and confusion among users, since they will often continue to work with the DOC accidentially. This is the reality I know of from daily user support. 0,000000001 percent

re: Word Q & A

wrdblog — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:31:46 GMT

FYI - We've extended the duration for commenting on this post. -Jonathan(MS)

re: Word Q & A

wrdblog — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:22:23 GMT

As one of the Program Managers on the Word team, I value the information that we see come through the comments on this blog. This is our opportunity to hear what you are thinking about our product and to provide some context for the decisions we made in crafting the currently available version. I’d like to address the points that were raised about compatibility to hopefully give you some information for moving forward: * Not being able to have a new document created in the *.DOC format is indeed a design limitation in Word 2007. It’s one we hope to address in future releases. You’re right that the experience that we created of changing the file format on Save is not sufficient for users who for whatever reason prefer not to move to the new file format. * Not deleting the DOC file on Convert when the file is not on a local drive is actually a design decision that we believe is still the right compromise. When the file is local, the text in the dialog is accurate (the DOC file is deleted after the DocX file is created). However, we determined that when the file is not stored locally, it’s more likely that a link exists pointing to that file (because it’s quite possible that the reason that the file isn’t local is because it’s on shared resource). Therefore, we decided that when the file was stored remotely, it was better to preserve the DOC rather than create broken links—and our early testing indicated that having the dialog box distinguish these two cases just seemed to confuse users more than provide clarity. * The file format of a document and the layout compatibility of a document are two fundamentally different concepts in Word (unlike PowerPoint or Excel). From the beginning, Word has had a concept of maintaining layout compatibility with previous versions. The Convert button in Word 2007 does two things—it upgrades the file format to the newest standard and clears the compatibility options so that the layout is as if the document were created in Word 2007. That’s why when you work on a DocX file in an earlier version, it’s back in compatibility mode—not because of the file format but because of the layout constraints imposed by working on that document in an older version. To see the wide range of factors that are part of layout compatibility, check out Word Options->Advanced->Compatibility Options->Layout Options (way down at the very bottom of the dialog. I hope that this information helps provide some context for the decisions we made for the last two items and trust that we’ll address the customer need identified for the first item. -Stuart

re: Word Q & A

0,000000001 percent — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:18:07 GMT

@funnybroad:

Thank you very much for your good presentation: Actually EVERYBODY should have a look at it!!! IMHO Office 2007 usability regarding those bugs and issues is a real desaster. Obviously MS did not nearly test enough for usability and functionality in the compatibilty, migration and interoperability areas :-( I hope for MS they will do this now and fix those issues really very soon so it will work OUT-OF-THE-BOX. If they do not, many companies WILL deeply investigate how to migrate to competing Office suites. The more issues in Office 2007 I see occuring I feel like this as well... So is Office 2007 just a product for students and home users? Or was it simply put to market maybe 1, 2 or even 3 years too early and is not being really ready for office use yet? Btw I read this comment in another blog:

"Really if Apple took it over at least it would work. MS has become a disaster instead of fixing or enhancing features they remove them. Instead of fixing bugs they start on the next version." It's the same way I often feel about Office 2007. :-(